Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures

"What in the world are those people up to?"

Ruth Fielding's clear voice asked the question of her chum, Helen Cameron, and her chum's twin-brother, Tom. She turned from the barberry bush she had just cleared of fruit and, standing on the high bank by the roadside, gazed across the rolling fields to the Lumano River.

"What people?" asked Helen, turning deliberately in the automobile seat to look in the direction indicated by Ruth.

"Where? People?" joined in Tom, who was tinkering with the mechanism of the automobile and had a smudge of grease across his face.

"Right over the fields yonder," Ruth explained, carefully balancing the pail of berries. "Can't you see them, Helen?"

"No-o," confessed her chum, who was not looking at all where Ruth pointed.

"Where are your eyes?" Ruth cried sharply.

"Nell is too lazy to stand up and look," laughed Tom. "I see them. Why! there's quite a bunch-and they're running."

"Where? Where?" Helen now demanded, rising to look.

"Oh, goosy!" laughed Ruth, in some vexation. "Right ahead. Surely you can see them now?"

"Oh," drawled Tom, "sis wouldn't see a meteor if it fell into her lap."

"I guess that's right, Tommy," responded his twin, in some scorn. "Neither would you. Your knowledge of the heavenly bodies is very small indeed, I fear. What do they teach you at Seven Oaks?"

"Not much about anything celestial, I guarantee," said Ruth, slyly. "Oh! there those folks go again."

"Goodness me!" gasped Helen. "Where are these wonderful persons? Oh! I see them now."

"Whom do you suppose they are chasing?" demanded Tom Cameron. "Or, who is chasing them?"

"That's it, Tommy," scoffed his sister. "I understand you have taken up navigation with the other branches of higher mathematics at Seven Oaks; and now you want to trouble Ruth and me with conundrums.

"Are we soothsayers, that we should be able to explain, off-hand," pursued Helen, "the actions of such a crazy crowd of people as those--Do look there! that woman jumped right down that sandbank. Did you ever?"

"And there goes another!" Ruth exclaimed.

"Likewise a third," came from Tom, who was quite as much puzzled as were the girls.

"One after the other-just like Brown's cows," giggled Helen. "Isn't that funny?"

"It's like one of those chases in the moving pictures," suggested Tom.

"Why, of course!" Ruth cried, relieved at once. "That's exactly what it is," and she scrambled down the bank with the pail of barberries.

"What is what?" asked her chum.

"Moving pictures," Ruth said confidently. "That is, it will be a film in time. They are making a picture over yonder. I can see the camera-man off at one side, turning the crank."

"Cracky!" exclaimed Tom, grinning, "I thought that was a fellow with a hand-organ, and I was looking for the monkey."

"Monkey, yourself," cried his sister, gaily.

"Didn't know but that he was playing for those 'crazy creeters'-as your Aunt Alvirah would call them, Ruthie-to dance by," went on Tom. "Come on! I've got this thing fixed up so it will hobble along a little farther. Let's take the lane there and go down by the river road, and see what it's all about."

"Good idea, Tommy-boy," agreed Ruth, as she got into the tonneau and sat down beside Helen.

"Fancy! taking moving pictures out in the open in mid-winter," Helen remarked. "Although this is a warm day."

"And no snow on the ground," chimed in Ruth. "Uncle Jabez was saying last evening that he doesn't remember another such open winter along the Lumano."

"Say, Ruthie, how does your Uncle Jabez treat you, now that you are a bloated capitalist?" asked Helen, pinching her chum's arm.

"Oh, Helen! don't," objected Ruth. "I don't feel puffed up at all-only vastly satisfied and content."

"Hear her! who wouldn't?" demanded Tom. "Five thousand dollars in bank-and all you did was to use your wits to get it. We had just as good a chance as you did to discover that necklace and cause the arrest of the old Gypsy," and the young fellow laughed, his black eyes twinkling.

"I never shall feel as though the reward should all have been mine," Ruth said, as Tom prepared to start the car.

"Pooh! I'd never worry over the possession of so much money," said Helen. "Not I! What does it matter how you got it? But you don't tell us what your Uncle Jabez thinks about it."

"I can't," responded Ruth, demurely.

"Why not?"

"Because Uncle Jabez has expressed no opinion-beyond his usual grunt. It doesn't really matter how the dear man feels," pursued Ruth Fielding, earnestly. "I know how I feel about it. I am no longer a 'charity child'--"

"Oh, Ruthie! you never were that," Helen hastened to say.

"Oh, yes I was. When I first came to the Red Mill you know Uncle Jabez only took me in because I was a relative and he felt that he had to."

"But you helped save him a lot of money," cried Helen. "And there was that Tintacker Mine business. If you hadn't chanced to find The Fox's brother out there in the wilds of Montana, and nursed him back to health, your uncle would never have made a penny in that investment."

Helen might have gone on with continued vehemence, had not Ruth stopped her by saying:

"That makes no difference in my feelings, my dear. Each quarter Uncle Jabez has had to pay out a lot of money to Mrs. Tellingham for my tuition. And he has clothed me, and let me spend money going about with you 'richer folks,'" and Ruth laughed rather ruefully. "I feel that I should not have allowed him to do it. I should have remained at the Red Mill and helped Aunt Alvirah--"

"Pooh! Nonsense!" ejaculated Tom, as the spark ignited and the engine began to rumble.

"You shouldn't be so popular, Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill," chanted Helen, leaning over to kiss her chum's flushed cheek.

"Look out for the barberries!" cried Ruth.

"I reckon you don't want to spill them, after working so hard to get them," Tom said, as the automobile lurched forward.

"I certainly do not," Ruth admitted. "I scratched my hands all up getting the bucket full. Just fancy finding barberries still clinging to the bushes in such quantities this time of the year."

"What good are they?" queried Helen, selecting one gingerly and putting it into her mouth.

"Oh! Aunt Alvirah makes the loveliest pies of them-with huckleberries, you know. Half and half."

"Where'll you find huckleberries this time of year?" scoffed Tom. "On the bushes too?"

"In glass jars down cellar, sir," replied Ruth, smartly. "I did help pick those and put them up last summer, in spite of all the running around we did."

"Beg pardon, Miss Fielding," said Tom. "Go on. Tell us some more recipes. Makes my mouth water."

"O-o-oh! so will these barberries!" exclaimed Helen, making a wry face. "Just taste one, Tommy."

"Many, many thanks! Good-night!" ejaculated her brother, "I know better. But those barberries properly prepared with sugar make a mighty nice drink in summer. Our Babette makes barberry syrup, you know."

"Ugh! It doesn't taste like these," complained his sister. "Oh, folks! there are those foolish actors again."

"Now what are they about?" demanded Ruth.

"Look out that you don't bring the car into the focus of the camera, Tom," his sister warned him. "It will make them awfully mad."

"Don't fret. I have no desire to appear in a movie," laughed Tom.

"But I think I would like to," said his sister. "Wouldn't you, Ruth?"

"I-I don't know. It must be awfully interesting--"

"Pooh!" scoffed Tom. "What will you girls get into your heads next? And they don't let girls like you play in movies, anyway."

"Oh, yes, they do!" cried his sister. "Some of the greatest stars in the film firmament are nothing more than schoolgirls. They have what they call 'film charm.'"

"Think you've got any of that commodity?" demanded Tom, with cheerful impudence.

"I don't know--Oh, Ruth, look at that girl! Now, Tommy, see there! That girl isn't a day older than we."

"Too far away to make sure," said Tom, slowly. Then, the next moment, he ejaculated: "What under the sun is she doing? Why! she'll fall off that tree-trunk, the silly thing!"

The slender girl who had attracted their attention had, at the command of the director of the picture, scrambled up a leaning sycamore tree which overhung the stream at a sharp angle. The girl swayed upon the bare trunk, balancing herself prettily, and glanced back over her shoulder.

Tom had brought the car to a stop. When the engine was shut off they could hear the director's commands:

"That's it, Hazel. Keep that pose. Got your focus, Carroll?" he called to the camera man. "Now-ready! Register fear, Miss Hazel. Say! act as though you meant it! Register fear, I say-just as though you expected to fall into the water the next moment. Oh, piffle! Not at all like it! not at all like it!"

He was a dreadfully noisy, pugnacious man. Finally the girl said:

"If you think I am not scared, Mr. Grimes, you are very much mistaken. I am. I expect to slip off here any moment-Oh!"

The last was a shriek of alarm. What she was afraid would happen came to pass like a flash. Her foot slipped, she lost her balance, and the next instant was precipitated into the river!

* * *